There’s movement in the stillness, still
by planet p
Summary: AU; sometimes, when you least expect them, things change; or maybe they’ve always been changing and you’ve never had any reason to look before.


**There's movement in the stillness, still** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.

* * *

_2010_

"Can we talk?"

As they stood in the drive beside his car, the wind brushing sharp paint strokes of dark hair across her cheek, the question sounded rehearsed, as though something that had come straight out of one of those cheap movies that could sometimes be picked up at discount variety stores reasonably cheaply. He should have noticed her car across the way, the same silver Volvo she been driving for a couple of years now since picking it up second-hand, he supposed, but he'd been too wrapped up in his thoughts to think much about the cars parked along the street.

Despite the coolness of the early evening, he suddenly felt hot, flushed, and hoped it didn't show on his skin. They'd had… a thing… well, a night, a couple of months back and, since then, he hadn't felt quite comfortable being near his daughter's best friend. It wasn't really that she was Debbie's best friend, it was just that it had been so stupid, so pointless that now… now he didn't know why he kind of hoped they might maybe get together again. It wasn't even as though he was into her; he got as much just looking at her, with the wind blowing hair in her mouth, and thinking, so, her hair's grown a bit, it's a little longer than the bob she usually wears it in, but… he thought nothing of her mouth, or her skin… or any of those things he supposed people usually thought about when they were into someone else. It would just be nice, he thought, for a change, to have someone to share a few moments of intimacy with.

Now this.

He couldn't figure it out; on top of that, his hands had begun to shake. He nodded shortly, almost stiffly, and turned the car key in the lock, locking up the car before he began to make his way toward the house.

Silvie followed silently without his having to invite her to do so.

He was glad, at least, for that.

.

Inside the house, it was hardly much warmer than outside; if it hadn't been for the lack of wind, he might have said it wasn't warmer at all, but the stillness was comforting.

He leaned past her to close the door after her, and turned back to face her, "About?"

She put a hand to her throat, it was a gesture he hadn't seen from her before, but the hand was quickly dropped again. "I'm pregnant," she told him plainly.

His first thought was that she wanted money, so he asked, "Do you want money? Is that it?"

Nothing at all happened with her eyes, though she was usually very expressive with her eyes, and she said nothing.

He began to worry that he'd sounded wrong, or… something. He couldn't quite pin down his worry exactly, but it was there. "I'm not your dad," he added, feeling it appropriate. Maybe she would say something about how she'd been Debbie's best friend for eleven years…

"You're the baby's father," she said, still in that disgustingly plain voice, as though everything was just… just not real.

His first thought was that she was on drugs, then _Oh, God!_ There was no way on God's green Earth that she could just decide that! They'd had _one_ night! Well, if he was honest, a few hours out of a night, maybe three, three and a half. "I don't know what you're talking about!" he blurted foolishly, before he could tell himself not to.

It had sounded so… horribly wrong that she'd called it a baby already when it was only… a foetus…

"I don't have a boyfriend," she said blankly, as though reporting the reason for a late assignment to her teacher. "I've never had a boyfriend. I suppose I thought I'd… wait and see…" She trailed away, her brown eyes locked onto his in a horribly bland stare.

He scratched the inside of his arm, under his wrist, though the skin wasn't in the least irritated. The scratching made it red but he didn't notice, he was watching her, waiting, maybe, for her to say something, make her intentions known. After a while, he said, "Are you… going to…" and she shook her head quickly, making her dark hair slap her face, drawing his attention inexorably from her eyes.

She had Miss Parker's hair; though, to be fair, it wasn't Miss Parker's hair, it was Lyle's, her father's, it just happened that Miss Parker and Lyle were twins. He sometimes felt that Miss Parker honestly regretted the fact, and, with all that she knew of him, why not?

He couldn't help but think of what her father might say, it wasn't as though he wouldn't find out, if he already didn't know. He supposed they had some sort of bond born of both having the anomaly, and, he was a bit less certain, a similar expression of it. Maybe Silvie heard Voices, too.

"I don't know what you want of me," he told her, knowing, _just_ knowing, it had come out wrong, but half not caring. "Tell me. Say something! What do you want?"

"I thought I could live here, with you," she said, at last.

A dry, bitter laugh pushed up through his throat, echoing painfully as it made its way through the narrow hall, bouncing off walls, floor and ceiling, and losing itself through the jarred door to the lounge, or around the corner.

"I thought… you would say it would be okay, for the baby," she said.

He thought, suddenly, how her Canadian accent, as often hardly discernable as it was, grated on his nerves. It was just… different… unsettling. Annoying.

She blinked rapidly, quickly, as though nervous, or repelled, and he watched her eyes, now dropped to an unseeing midway point between them, widen, as though there was something she couldn't figure out quite. "If you-"

"I think you've got it. No! There! You got it. No, I don't want you coming to stay with me! I don't want you living here! I-! I shouldn't have to deal with this! You're an adult! You should have-! There are-!" A frown leapt onto his face and he adjusted his gaze to bore into hers. "You! You did this on purpose! You let this happen on purpose, did you?!"

She took a step back from him, from his anger, not seeing him, now. "I'll be at Daddy's," she told him, "if you wish to reach me. You have Daddy's number."

He'd never heard her refer to Lyle as Daddy before, it had always been Lyle. It wasn't shock, well, he wasn't sure that it was _only_ shock, but he made no reply, and she just turned around and kind of… left.

He let her.

.

"Do you want to watch something on television?"

"What?"

"I don't buy the newspaper. Ah, we could… ring Debbie, or… Miss Parker… or just have a look now at what's on."

"I don't want to watch TV."

"Oh, don't you?"

Silvie frowned at him seriously. It annoyed her how he talked to her like that sometimes, like they'd just met and she was this big mystery he couldn't even begin to guess after her feelings or thoughts.

"Coffee?" he offered, finally.

"Where's Sydney?" she asked.

"On the back step."

She made a face. It was cold and dark, and Sydney was on the back step. Yeah, great. She walked away, to fetch Sydney, her toy penguin.

Lyle looked at the television. No thanks to it for helping, it hadn't helped at all. He never knew what to say to Silvana; he'd left her in that place without her mother, without him, with those people who wanted to exploit her and hurt her… and now he didn't think there was anything to say; _I'm sorry_ wasn't going to change the past. Nothing ever would.

He watched Silvie trod back into the lounge room with Sydney and sit down at the couch. "If you want me to say something, I could always say something really crappy like, 'I want another sibling,'" she told him, without looking at him. She was fiddling with Sydney's foot, squeezing it and letting it go and squeezing it again as though she expected Sydney to ask her to stop, or to try to stop herself, but she didn't.

"Is that what you want?" he asked, looking at her not watching him; she was watching the blank television screen.

"I wish we could have a house, that we could all live in," she elaborated, in as bland a voice as she'd used all night, "like a family."

"I don't think that's ever going to happen," he told her.

"But I wish it could."

He said nothing; he didn't feel like upsetting anyone tonight.

.

It was 4 A.M. when he got up and walked down to the kitchen; he hadn't been sleeping really anyway, just hoping he would finally fall asleep.

Silvie was sitting at the table, staring blankly at the plastic container he usually kept in the freezer which kept two of Thomas's fingers in it. "Why do you have Tommy's fingers?" she asked, using Parker's name for him.

"Because your father's mad," he told her, and picked the container up from the table and took it back to the freezer; it shouldn't have been out in the first place.

"Do you think I'm mad?"

"What?" He shut the freezer door and turned to face her, frowning. What a stupid question.

"I said, 'Do you think I'm mad?'"

"I heard what you said," he replied, annoyed. "Why would you be mad?"

"Because you are. Isn't that what you just said? And I have what you have. So, I'm mad."

"That doesn't make sense," he told her shortly. "And… it's up to you if you think you're mad. If I thought so, I'd want us to discuss it. I wouldn't… Not with you."

She shook her head; what a load of crap! "You should have told him."

"Try to get some rest," he said, as though she hadn't spoken. "It's late." He turned away and walked to the door, and out into the hallway.

"I won't," she told him.

.

She was standing in front of the refrigerator with the door open, letting the cold air fall out and settle around her, and at her feet, when he walked back in to the kitchen. She was only vaguely perusing the shelves; there was too much of Parker's favourite cherry-flavoured soft drink, Paz, as though he thought it would make him feel closer to the sister who hated every last bit of his guts. Like, when he was annoyed, he'd taken to sometimes talking with an Irish accent, like Catherine had. Maybe he hadn't been wrong; maybe he was mad, but not mad enough that he didn't see it, and maybe he was okay with that, too.

"Do you think that I don't feel… like I did the wrong thing, for not showing him enough… for not having enough confidence in him!"

She took out a can of Paz from a shelf in the door and shut the fridge. "Maybe you never got the memo," she snapped, "but you weren't the only one who could have told him. I knew as well as you did. You couldn't hide it from me, you know. Maybe you thought you had, but you hadn't!"

"And now you're going to say, what, that that my fault? That I held you back, _because you didn't want to go against me, because that would _hurt_ me!_"

"You said it yourself," Silvie bit back. "And, just in case you were wondering, I don't recall, _word for word_, my exact thoughts on the subject! It's never going to be any different, no matter what you feel about it. Feeling crappy about it every second of the day it's going to change it! It's not going to change anything!"

"Actually, you're wrong. Don't! Interrupt! It will change a lot. And you're wrong. I don't feel bad about – I realise that I was wrong! They are two different things."

She narrowed her eyes. "You still feel bad about it. What do you think I am – stupid?! You think I can't pick it a mile away!"

"That isn't true."

"Who cares? Isn't that what you're thinking? You have to keep being reminded of all the things you did that turned out, later, to be wrong; so who gives a shit if you feel bad about them or not! It's only karma working the way it should that someone would feel bad for the shitty stuff we've all done!"

"You need to get some sleep. You don't need caffeine."

"Like Hell I don't."

"You don't believe in Hell."

"How would you know? You don't even know me! You never talk to me! You talk to Debbie, but you'll never talk to me unless someone backs you into a corner and there's no way out! And who gives a fuck if I do or not! Don't all Goths believe in shit like that?! Don't they all want to be fucking dead?!"

"I don't think anyone wants to be dead," Lyle told her calmly. "Unless they're very unhealthy."

"Well fuck you!" Silvie screamed, slamming her Paz down on the table, and glaring at him. "I do!"

He frowned. "Rubbish!"

"Fuck you!" She stalked off past him, into the lounge.

"Would you stop using that kind of language!" he said, walking after her.

She snatched Sydney from the couch and hugged him. "NO! Now you're Alex's fucking best friend! He was a loony! He thought he was so much better than the rest of us, but what did he fucking do! Fucking nothing! He _died_! Like every fucking thing that lives eventually does!"

"He was very, very sick. You have no idea, Saskia."

"Don't you fucking call me that!" Silvie hollered.

"Why don't you just calm down and lower your voice. It's late, and I don't want to disturb the neighbours and have them calling the police around. Do you?"

"I don't give a fuck!"

"I think you do."

"You don't fucking know what I think!"

Lyle sighed. "Would you like me to ring Debbie? Is that what you'd like? She can come around and pick you up, you can stay with her tonight?"

Silvie stomped away to the lounge room door, slamming it loudly after her.

Tazu stepped away from beside the television, where she'd been standing, and sat down on the couch.

Lyle went to sit next to her. Sometimes, he really didn't know what to say. He didn't like yelling, so all he could do was try to be calm, and maybe try to calm the other person down, too, but that evidently hadn't worked this time.

"She's very angry," Tazu said, in absence of any words of advice.

"Aren't we all," Lyle replied.

"I suppose so, to different degrees. Do you think there'll be anything on television?"

"We can look."

Tazu crossed her arms, waiting for him to turn the TV on; waiting to see if anything decent was on. It was okay to watch arguments on the television, in real life they just hurt.


End file.
